Celebrity in Death

wait awhile before you jump to the next level.”
    “You didn’t,” Peabody reminded her.
    “Nothing about me and Roarke was smart. Nothing about us should’ve worked, when you look at it close.”
    “You’re wrong about that. The closer you look, the more it’s clear why it worked. Why it works.”
    “Maybe so. But if you’re late due to sex again, I’ll kick your ass.”
    “Understood.”
    “We’re going to swing by to talk to Mavis and Leonardo before we head in. They left before the body was discovered, but they were there through the evening, and during the gag reel, so we need their statements.Added to it, Mavis played herself so she did some work with the cast and crew. She may have something to add to the mix.”
    I t was still a little odd to return to the building, and the apartment that had once been hers. Now Mavis, Leonardo, and their baby had the space—and more, as they’d taken the neighboring apartment and taken out walls, redesigned to accommodate the family and their work.
    Odder still in some ways that Peabody and McNab had taken an apartment in the same building.
    A lot of changes, Eve thought, in a short time.
    “It’s early,” she began as they started up the stairs she’d once climbed daily. “But I want to get this done even if we have to wake them up.”
    “Dallas, they’ve got a baby less than a year old. Believe me, they’re up.”
    “If you say so.” She knocked, noting the security—solid—and the fact somebody had recently painted the door hot candy pink.
    Leonardo, his big, gilded, tawny eyes a bit sleepy, his coppery hair in long dreads, opened the door with a huge smile. “Good morning! What a nice surprise.”
    He wore what Eve supposed was his home wear of long cream-colored tunic with elaborate embroidery on the cuffs over loose chocolate brown pants.
    Though he’d seen them only hours before, he greeted them both with enthusiastic bear hugs. “Mavis is just finishing getting Bella dressed for the day. We’re going to a family yoga class later this morning before Mavis goes to the studio for a recording and I start a round of meetings on spring designs.”
    “Yoga? The kid does yoga?”
    “It’s a good activity for the family.”
    “Okay. And spring? It’s barely fall.”
    “Fashion is forward. Coffee? I have some of Roarke’s blend. I’ve been spoiled.”
    “I’ll get it.” At home, Peabody moved through the open space to a newly designed kitchen.
    Eve took a moment to glance around. Everything was color—the walls, the art, the fabrics hanging here and there as if at random. They’d separated the kitchen from the living space with half walls of some sort of textured glass.
    Every time she came by, it looked less and less like what she’d left behind.
    “It looks like you,” she decided. “Like all of you.”
    “We’re happy here.”
    “Yeah, it feels happy here. Look, Leonardo, I’m sorry to crash into your morning, but—”
    Before she could finish, Mavis bounced out, hair bundled up in a curly topknot, a sunburst of color in her snug top with her knee-length pants picking up the pattern with wide cuffs. On her hip, Bella wore similar pants in the same pink as the front door and a white top with
Namaste
spelled out in sparkling rhinestones.
    Bella squealed. “Das!” After that, her current name for Eve, she babbled out a stream of the incomprehensible.
    “I thought I heard somebody. And Peabody!” Mavis did a quick dance on sparkly red skids. “You’re just in time. Wait till you see this. Okay, Bellissima, go see Dallas!”
    “Das!” Bella called as Mavis set her carefully on her feet with the baby gripping Mavis’s fingers.
    “You can do it, baby. You can do it.”
    Blue eyes huge, Bella took a shaky step on her pink skids. Then another, with her hands waving like bird’s wings when she let go of Mavis’s fingers.
    “What’s she doing? How can she do that?” Eve had to will herself not to retreat as the little legs and hands worked, and the blue eyes shone with the thrill of it.
    “She’s walking!” Leaving the coffee behind, Peabody eased out of the kitchen. “She’s taken her first steps.”
    And finished them by ramming into Eve’s legs, clutching her trousers like a rope off a cliff.
    “Just this morning,” Mavis sniffled, “Leonardo put her down to play on the floor while we got her breakfast. And she pulled herself up on the chair, and walked to him. She walked to her daddy. It still waters me